Tēnā koutou,

Entries for the 2025 Landfall Young Writers’ Essay Competition are currently open and we would love to invite your students to submit their work.

The competition is open to anyone in Aotearoa aged 16-25. Entries close year on the 31st of March, 2025. 

The winner will receive $1500 and a year’s subscription to Landfall. The winning essay will also be published in Landfall 249: Autumn 2025.

Here are some tips about essay writing that judge and Landfall editor Lynley Edmeades has written to help them get started:

The creative essay can literally be about anything—from generative AI to Billie Eilish, from the climate crisis to your preferred style of Doc Marten. It might be informative, meditative, uplifting, or enraged. Think of it as a container for your thoughts, a place to think through something that’s on your mind—something beautiful or annoying, something absolutely bonkers or just plain cool. We want to hear what you think about the world and your place in it. 

Here are a couple of tips:

• The word ‘essay’ from the French, means ‘to try’. Try an idea on (like a new hat) and see where it takes you.

• Start with the everyday. The small things that make up your daily life often contain the biggest insights once you spend a bit of time really thinking about them. Where does your coffee come from? What’s the name of that spider you saw in the shower this morning? What is the etymology of ‘bed’?

• Don’t be afraid to write about things you don’t know or understand, or to leave things unresolved. Many great essays never come to a neat conclusion, but simply show the writer thinking or asking themselves questions as they go. 

• Read some creative essays! Start with some previous winners of this competition…

You can also find out more by heading to our website.

Meg Hamilton

Publicity and Marketing

OTAGO UNIVERSITY PRESS
Te Whare Tā o Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka
PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand
533 Castle St, Dunedin
Phone: +64 3 479 9094
http://www.otago.ac.nz/press

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